With a federal election likely this year, it’s time the people started demanding improved democracy from the politicians: high on the list of our needs is a national ICAC body.
Corruption fight: call for election promise
By Bill Rowlings, CEO of Civil Liberties Australia
With expert commentators calling for a national anti-corruption watchdog, will the Turnbull government have the courage in 2016 to establish a body that in future might bite politicians on the posterior?Civil Liberties Australia lives in hope that public interest triumphs over political self-interest.Experience tells us not to hope too high.However, as part of justice reform (See CLA’s Better Justice initiative), dispensing anti-corruption justice across boundaries in the national sphere is a key longer-term aim driving liberties, rights and reform bodies, as well as many expert commentators.
“Corruption seldom comes tightly packaged and tied with a bow,” CLA president Dr Kristine Klugman said.“Civil Liberties Australia believes all major parties should make a 2016 election promise to establish such a national anti-corruption body,” Dr Klugman said.“The current fragmented (federal) system is manifestly inadequate when compared to the promise of a federal ICAC,” political systems monitor Dr Gabrielle Appleby has written, referring to the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption.
She is an associate professor at UNSW, and co-head of the Judiciary Project at the Gilbert & Tobin Centre of Publc Law Centre.“Corruption is a weed that can quickly strangle politics and government. Given the dangers, why are we still arguing about whether the federal government needs an anti-corruption watchdog? Is it possible to argue against a federal ICAC?,” she asked in an article on The Drum.
“Every Australian state now has its own anti-corruption watchdog. The core function of these bodies is to investigate complaints of corruption and misconduct against politicians, government officers, the public service and judges. They have wide powers to compel testimony and documents.“In 2011, the Joint Committee on the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity recommended a full review of the Commonwealth’s integrity framework with a view to establishing a generalist, dedicated anti-corruption body.
The Joint Committee noted that the lack of such a body to date meant ‘there could be a lot of “undisturbed rocks” that need to be overturned if the public is to be fully assured that integrity in the public sector is being properly maintained and safeguarded’. “But the Commonwealth has managed to resist the establishment of a standing anti-corruption watchdog. A National Parliamentary Integrity Commissioner, promised by Julia Gillard as part of winning the support of the Greens after the 2010 election, was never introduced.
“In 2012, the Gillard government claimed that there was ‘no convincing case for the establishment of a single overarching integrity commission’. Rather, the government championed the benefits of the fragmented system of accountability that currently exists, asserting that ‘no single body should be responsible’. The government explained that by distributing responsibility, ‘a strong system of checks and balances’ is created,” Dr Appleby wrote.
But the problem, CLA says, is perennial: the blinkers of officialdom. If no one person or body has clear and direct responsibility for tackling corruption, no individual or entity is likely to glance right or left to pick up a problem it can avoid by looking straight ahead down the narrow tunnel of avoiding work it is not specifically obliged to perform.
Appleby says there certainly are offices and mechanisms at the federal level that perform part of the role of a federal ICAC. “But do they really provide a ‘strong system of checks and balances’when it comes to government corruption?” she asks. “The only federal office specifically directed at curbing corruption is the Integrity Commissioner, who heads the Australian Commission for Law Enforcement Integrity.
The Integrity Commissioner may investigate corruption issues but is limited to investigations in the law enforcement arena.” Writing in 2015, former Victorian Appeal Court judge and adviser to the state’s premier, Stephen Charles, contradicted then Prime Minister Tony Abbott. Asked by a reporter if there ought to be a Commonwealth anti-corruption commission, Abbott replied “no”, saying he thought Canberra was a “pretty clean polity”. “It is possible that not many people agree with him — a Griffith University Centre for Governance and Public Policy survey found the federal government now ranks third behind state and local government on the crucial issue of trust,” Charles wrote.
He said there were numerous instances of misconduct in government agencies and entities at the intersection of money, power and influence, and went on to list them…for three long paragraphs: http://tinyurl.com/ztxnyeg “Corruption is usually well hidden, it is difficult to discover and expose, and it needs a body with the powers and bite of the NSW ICAC…,” Charles wrote. “And the Commonwealth ought to be an enthusiastic supporter of the creation of such a body since it is both a signatory of the UN Convention Against Corruption and a member since 2013 of the Open Government Partnership.”
He pointed out that, under Article 36 of UNCAC, Australia, as a state party, must: “… ensure the existence of a body or bodies specialised in combatting corruption through law enforcement. Such body or bodies or persons shall be granted the necessaryindependence … to be able to carry out their functions effectively and without any undue influence. Such persons or staff of such body or bodies shall have the appropriate training and resources to carry out their tasks.”
One of the practising experts in corruption investigations has said – from things he has personally observed – that federal politicians may be corrupt.The barrister who made his name as counsel assisting the NSW body, Geoffrey Watson, has said a national ICAC was needed to clean out Canberra. Commenting in 2014 at an international legal conference In Melbourne, he said: “I have seen things that show that federal politicians are not immune from temptation.”
Mr Watson, whose work with the NSW ICAC has exposed serious corruption or impropriety involving NSW Labor and Liberal ministers, also said there was “nothing different in the air inCanberra” when it came to the question of misconduct by public officials. http://tinyurl.com/q8a9anf
NOTE: It’s easy to forget how simply and easily corruption can occur, even in agencies with the best reputations: in December 2015, ICAC reported on a case of undersupply of goods and other corrupt practices involving the Rural Fire Service of NSW: http://icac.nsw.gov.au/media-centre/media-releases/article/4897
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